Cool night air,
Dark, damp streets lit by halogen lamps,
Eerie haloes of yellow under the stars.
Soft slanting rain tumbled to the ground,
Met with the oil in the gutters.

Huge landscapes of yellow trees
Apricots and peaches
Lightning glimmering above
Cows in the fields behind
Birds cartwheeling in the light
And streets upon streets of golden houses.

People running, laughing, crying, kissing
Everywhere.

The smell of sulphur in the air,
The Mona Lisa sailing over canyons of gold,
The Louvre shattering like a bomb,
Great works of art spilling out:
The birds take them and fly into the sun.

Mountains sat and waved their hands,
Harmonicas squeaked through the air,
Pottery sailed over the great crag-tops
Planes turning and wheeling far above
Huge smoke rings of blue fabrics
Quilted fields, frozen leaves, windy beaches
The smell of freshly baked bread.

Giraffes, sheep, a bull pelican, a battle-scarred
Buffalo and a barracuda,
Wading through a sea of green,
Huge forests of Canadian redwood and cacti
Littering the world with verdant colour
The Empire State Building floating in a teacup
The size of a football stadium.
Still the lava of Mt St Helens slides past.

Great expanses of sandy empires
Glaciers of sapphires flowing down the Eiffel Tower
Pearls and topaz in the Ural Mountains
Victorian London, monkeys chattering in branches
Home-made marmalade, a Ford Focus steering wheel,
U2 concerts, full blast.

Poison arrow frogs, the pillars of Stonehenge,
Impossibly white polar bears, lightning Concordes,
Picnic hampers, baguettes stuffed with silicon chips,
Icebergs tumbling down Edinburgh’s cobbled lanes,
Lit by Apollo 11 from behind,
Olympic runners stumbling through shrubbery,
While the nightjars in the baobabs sing plaintive songs.

Pyramids, blistering Egyptian heat, Russian steppe,
Neanderthals eating caviar, Henry VIII and AK47s,
Chinese temples, Mount Rushmore,
Waterfalls of electric fires and blazing logs,
Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses, bleating lambs,
Rosemary and thyme, French chandeliers, stalactites,
Great Barrier Reef lit by electric lamps.

Works of fiction spew out from the power plant
A waltz of chintz chairs and mantelpieces
Encroaching ferns, medieval knights,
Ringo Starr, conveyor belts and recording tape,
Everything coming together

And a voice said: “I Am What I Am.
And All That I Am Is THIS.”